Summer: A User’s Guide

I had a lot of reading time available this weekend, and carried Summer: A User’s Guide around where ever I went. This is a fantastic, welcome to summer book.
A great hostess gift, it starts with tips on your own summer place. How to prepare for the summer. What to do to spruce up your rental. How to entertain guests. Next, it moves into the true summer essentials, and guides the reader through everything from how to cook and eat a lobster, to hosting a clambake (something I’m now dying to do), to making beach towel pillow (I might actually pull out the machine and try this one) to making a backyard tire swing.
Interspersed through all of the how-tos are a wealth of summertime information that anyone around got to hear me read aloud. Through my fascinated readings, my husband has learned the true history of baseball, he’s aware of the creation and invention of marshmallows and he got to hear all about the origin of Amusement Parks.
We’re now preparing to read the northern summer night sky and canoe, correctly, at our lake house. I was reminded of tie-dying techniques and learned how to create a butterfly-loving garden.
This book is more than a structured “how to.” The pictures are coffee-table quality, and the value–it becomes a keepsake type of gift. What a fantastic way to welcome in the summer–this book gets you set and ready for a margarita (said to have first been made by a Dallas Socialite named Margarita, I learned that!), a barbeque and a good old game of croquet.
At Amazon for $13.57, stock up on a few copies and you’ll have hostess gifts that all summer lovers will enjoy. (Don’t forget one for you, too!) Summer anyone?